Hinky Dinky Time with Uncle Michael:
Playlist
from April 27, 2018

Turning over the toy box and jamming together the gloriously mismatched musical Lincoln Logs, Legos and Tinker Toys from Tin Pan Alley pluggers, pickled egg tavern weepers, lockstep soul ensembles, skinny-tie power poppers, Eurotrash ravers, moontanned art school rockers, drunken soccer anthems and anything else that seems like a good idea at the time. There are no guilty pleasures.

Upcoming events:

Dance away the crazy with a radio party, every Friday 3-7pm (ET). Now until further notice. This week, Uncle Michael's Topeka Sound System presents "So Shall Dis Dancing" — nonstop positive vibrations from the islands.

For upcoming special events for Hinky Dinky Time with Uncle Michael, click here.

Track information pertains, as much as is possible, to the original release, and should not be construed as bearing any relationship to the presence or absence of a particular artifact in Uncle Michael's possession.

Karen's voice is pretty but... the songs are so awful. I was in high school and they were beloved by all the Jesus freak girls because they were so squeaky clean. Not like those nasty Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin.

@UM & @SCL: I do hear sadness, but yeah, probably hindsight. I have some trouble with the arrangements and yes, the "good" girls and a few boys in my h.s. also flattened my appreciation. But as I acquire years and wisdom, I hear the beauty. #contralto

Paul Williams appeared at a benefit for my daughter's high school a few years ago. He wasn't even the guest of honor -- that was Tony Bennett. Paul confessed that singing around Tony made him very self conscious.

12:39pm
still b/p:

Carpenter hits of the day were regarded as squishy, saccharine, treacly and thin by many back then, including me and plenty of people around me. But I’ve moved on to some respect and appreciation, as with many other — not all — music that was grating and mockable in my younger ears.

12:39pm
Dean:

Carpenters were okay by me at the time mostly because they covered Bacharach, and since they also performed Williams tunes, he passed muster, too.

Naw, I heard Steppenwolf qua Steppenwolf, pre-Easy Rider, when I was just a tad older than my daughter is now. (Shudder.) That song is ageless, sounds as rockin' (mandatory apostrophe) now as it did then. The PSY, OTOH, sounds quaintly from another time.

Afternoon all! This segue suggests a MUCH different ending to the Lake Minnetonka scene.

1:12pm
Mark R:

I didn't see if somebody answered this, but it was indeed the Jackson 5 who kept "We've Only Just Begun" out of the #1 slot. The Jackson's dominated the Billboard charts that year--they had 4 or 5 #1s, or at least top 3's. Pretty impressive.

Because of a quirky way my brain is broken / special, words I hear or see written tend to hook into song titles or lyrics floating around in the back of my head and lead to the song associated with those lyrics making an appearance as an earworm, usually without my knowing consciously what the proximate cause was.

Back when people were saying and writing "YOLO!" a lot, Live and Let Die kept reappearing in my head.

you don't even want to know the awful song in my head lately.. ..tough thing is it's a GOOD song, but man.. those same 2 damn lines..ask me this evening when i'm falling asleep, right now it's out of the web